comment_fic 511-515: Angel the Series, Chuck, Highlander, DCU
Title: the gods who do not die
Fandom: Angel the Series
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: AU
Pairings: pre-Lindsey/Angel
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 210
Point of view: third
Prompt: Angel, Angel/Lindsey, on my dying day, yours was the last face I wanted to see.
Angel should have been the one to kill him, and they both know it. And when Lindsey opens his eyes after dying (again), it's to a Wolfram and Hart cleaning crew.
But Lindsey is unpredictable. It's his best gift, why he should have never been hired, why he should have been culled out years before he left, why Angel shouldn't have given Lorne that order.
Why he should have seen that order coming.
Angel might be dead. Lindsey was, but he got better. And if Angel did die, then Lindsey needs to resurrect his ass and punish him for a multitude of sins that can't be placed on Angelus.
First, though, he needs to get rid of the cleaning crew. And it's easy, it's so damn easy, only Angel has ever been a challenge. And he doesn't even need his tattoos anymore.
Someone up there is looking out for him. He wonders what for.
Decides he doesn't care, and probably won't do it, whatever it is. His own agenda comes before, during, and after everything else.
And what he wants now is the Euro-trash vampire who ordered his death instead of manning up and killing Lindsey himself. What he does after he has Angel? Hasn't made up his mind yet.
It'll be bloody, though.
Title: the egg of the phoenix
Fandom: Chuck
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: AU
Pairings: pre-Chuck/Bryce
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 375
Point of view: third
Prompt: Chuck, Chuck/Bryce, When it's for Bryce, even Chuck can't maintain his aversion to killing forever.
The thing is, he isn't an immediate threat. But Chuck knows he will be, someday. The last person left who knows Bryce is alive, knows Bryce is(much as he hates the word) damaged. Knows that Bryce can't shut it off, hears the Intersect whispering in his ear all the time.
Bryce killed everyone else when he broke free, an hour before Chuck finally found him. Everyone who hurt him only to watch the results. Who asked questions he knew the answers to but couldn't say, and then hurt him some more when he tried to tell them that.
Some kind of disconnect in his mind, but he's still Bryce.
He can speak full, understandable sentences in Klingon. But the other dozen languages that have always danced on his tongue? He's barely coherent in those, and the frustration is killing him, and this cowering little scientist with soiled underwear, who claims to be a doctor, who has two kids at home without a clue what Daddy really is-he's terrified enough that he'll let them go, won't raise the alarm no one else managed to raise when Bryce was raging through them, leaving bodies broken in his wake.
Chuck should be horrified at the ruins left, where Bryce took out his rage and pain, but he's too furious at the shadows still in Bryce's eyes.
And this little man, huddled against the wall and begging Chuck… he's not a threat, right now. And if Chuck says to let him live, Bryce will.
There's a virus eating its way through every system that mentions Bryce. By dawn, there will nothing left. No evidence beyond the bodies of what Bryce suffered. What he is. Any reports that got sent out, they'll be found and destroyed.
Which means… only this guy, he's the only one who can accurately inform anyone about Bryce. And if Chuck tells Bryce to kill the fucker, Bryce will. Gladly.
Bryce has killed for Chuck before. Will kill for Chuck again. And Chuck wants to hurt someone for what's been done to Bryce.
And this doctor's name was on that report Chuck read, the one that finally led him here, and the stuff this doctor did-
Chuck just wishes he had more time.
Title: Next thing, the world
Fandom: Highlander
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: AU during season 4
Pairings: Methos/Alexa
Rating: PG
Wordcount:355
Point of view: third
Prompt: Highlander, Methos, the Hunters had gone after Alexa. Now they were all fair game.
Alexa dies peacefully in Adam's arms, and she still has no idea who those men were.
Adam kisses her forehead and her lips, and tells her legends, until her vibrant spirit fades.
Adam buries Alexa. And then Adam dies.
o0o
Death has not walked the world in a very long time. Even then, his name was Methos, and he was a myth.
The hunters, those corrupt Watchers, believe Adam Pierson is a young immortal, a traitor, and an easy target. Of the three, they got one right.
Kronos could teach a course on Methos' treachery.
If Alexa hadn't been so frail… well, Methos would still have destroyed them all. It wouldn't have been so lingering, though.
o0o
Alexa would not want men dead in her name. But Alexa isn't here to object, and Death killed hundreds of thousands of men long before Alexa was born.
o0o
A month after Alexa's burial, twenty Watchers are dead and the rest are bundles of terror and rage. Death considers excising the entire cancer-every human who knows about immortals. Men and women who were friends of Adam Pierson, researchers who never knowingly met an immortal. Even Joe Dawson, one of his favorite humans in centuries.
He considers it. It would be easy. Adam Pierson is young, and innocent, and grieving the death of his wife. He's not even a suspect.
Instead, he traces those guilty and only kills everyone who seems to agree. The end result is one hundred and five dead and an entire society shaken to its core.
Once he's done, everyone knows why.
o0o
Methos created the Watchers. He reveals himself only to let them know he could destroy them, and then he vanishes again.
o0o
Alex Adamson is born on a warm day in Sydney. He is fresh out of grad school, graduated from Oxford. He is an orphan and an only child. He tells everyone who asks that he's after a fresh start.
Kronos finds him a year later and says that he's impressed.
Death raises a brow at Pestilence and says that he's not interested.
His beloved brother smiles and says, "I always knew when you lied."
Title: Then he was legend
Fandom: Highlander
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: future!fic, character death, immortal origin story that may not make much sense
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount:325
Point of view: third
Prompt: Highlander, any, Immortals are born to be warriors.
Joe is on his death-bed. Methos knows he'll be gone by sunrise, to that one place he's never been. Duncan is in the chair next to him, hands wrapped around Joe's, and he's trying to hold in his tears.
"Hey, Old Man," Joe wheezes. "Tell me where you think immortals came from. My last request."
Methos leans against the wall, looks at Joe for a moment, then looks past him, into a past so far gone he's the only one who remembers it. He's the only one who was there.
0000
once there was a lightning bolt, and there was an ocean. in the ocean lived things, primal and young. they only knew hunger and satiation, and the fear of filling something else's belly. to escape, one of them crawled out of the ocean onto a barren desert, and there it met the lightning bolt.
the lightning bolt studied the creature, trying to understand-the bolt didn't breathe, or hunger, or fear. it had been forever, and would be forever more. it was… curious.
what are you, little thing? it asked.
and the creature said, I'm alive.
the lightning bolt smiled and reached down to touch the first living thing it'd ever met.
be strong, little thing, it said. live. grow stronger. we'll meet again some other day.
and so, the legend goes… the first immortal came to be.
at least, that's how the oldest tells it. And it's not like anyone else was there who can say it went any different.
00000000
Joe looks at him and smiles… and doesn't breathe again.
It'll be a hundred years before Duncan sees Methos again, and though he wants to ask about the story, he never will.
00000000
what are you, little thing? it asked.
and, like every time before and every time after, the oldest living being on the planet said, I'm alive. I'll grow stronger. we'll meet again some other day.
and the lightning bolt smiled.
o
Title: you don't love me in a way I understand
Fandom: DCU
Disclaimer: not my characters
Warnings: may be out of character
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount:120
Point of view: third
Prompt: DCU, Jason Todd, his first night at the streets
He'll say later he wasn't afraid, and only the really young or the really stupid will believe him.
He knows he's the lesson, don't be like him, what not to do, all the mistakes that can be made, and aren't we wonderful? we took him back.
And maybe he shouldn't have come back, to be treated with kid gloves and wary eyes.
But he was frightened that night, and every night after, until the Batman took him home to Alfred and a roof and steady food and a way to ensure no one (except the very best of all) could ever hurt him again.
And in all honesty, though he'll never say it aloud... he doesn't want those kids to become him.